I don't know. At a certain point it was so off-the-chart bad — it got funny. My central nervous system was telling me something.
—Aaron Altman, Broadcast News

Let's be clear that these things happen in the course of a season, no matter how good a club is. Teams lose badly sometimes. It can happen with no warning, even at home in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. The Mets have a history of such degradations falling out of the bright blue sky and onto their heads — even the really good Mets.

The 1969 Mets were spanked hard in a daytime doubleheader July 30, a Wednesday afternoon at Shea, by the Houston Astros, 16-3 and 11-5; things got so unseemly that Gil Hodges marched straight to left field to legendarily inform Cleon Jones he was injured. The 1986 Mets, behind Dwight Gooden no less, took it on the chin and probably up an orifice or two from the Reds, 11-1, on the Wednesday afternoon of July 9.

It happens. It doesn't necessarily reflect your overall operation. It doesn't mean you are what you ate, even if you just ate it big time.

Sometimes, of course, it does. I don't know that the Mets losing this afternoon, another Wednesday, by an undeniably embarrassing tally of 13 to 1 means they are the kind of team that is barely good enough to beat an otherwise lousy Pittsburgh Pirates one night and horrid enough to get their heads kicked in by them the next day. I do know that since the truly scintillating evening that Armando Benitez balked Jose Reyes around the bases and Carlos Delagdo took him deep into the Flushing night, your New York Mets are a strictly break-even proposition: 69 and 69 dating back to May 30, 2007. That's 138 games. That's 84% of a full season, all managed by Willie Randolph, all masterminded by Omar Minaya, all featuring the stars David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, John Maine, Oliver Perez, Billy Wagner, Aaron Heilman and others.

69 and 69 is more alarming than 13 to 1. 13 to 1 is just plain ridiculous. Take it from one who witnessed nine frigid innings of it from Section 1 of the upper deck.

Yes! Yes, I went to this abortion of a debacle of a fiasco of a game! Yes, this was my chosen midweek afternoon in the sun! And yes, this was the absolute worst pounding I ever saw the Mets absorb at Shea Stadium in 36 seasons of Logging such matters. Except for one night in Detroit in 1997 when I was more concerned with the ballpark than the ballgame, I had never seen the Mets lose by as many as a dozen runs.

I have now.

Statistically, it was the worst home loss I ever experienced. Emotionally, it wasn't in the same ballpark as the Day of Devastation exactly seven months earlier, but having sat through September 30, 2007 and April 30, 2008, I detected some eerie parallels:

• Seven runs in an early inning off a starting pitcher who showed no gumption as things got worse and worse.
• Luis Castillo unhinging the starting pitcher with a fumbled double play ball.
• Luis Castillo making the last out.
• The Mets looking like amateurs against a team allegedly not on their level.
• No crowds to fight through on the way to the exits.

Differences? That was a numbing afternoon for reasons that have been exhaustively documented. This was just farcical. Also, today was like 40 degrees colder and the entire season was not at stake. Plus, we didn't start on time this time. I was with my friend Rich whose wife is expecting in about six days. Her water has yet to break, but the Mets' did. Add "been at a game delayed because a ruptured main wouldn't allow hosing of infield" to my lifetime attendance record.

Either way, the Mets delivered a twelve-run, bouncing loss.

Omar help us if there are any more days like this at Shea Stadium, but I mildly pity anyone who hasn't sat through one of these from late start to silent finish. Seriously. This was one of those days when you could really understand the instinct to boo, but after the umpteenth Met miscue, you didn't have the energy to take part. This was one of those days when you remembered what 1978 felt like every day, when you imagined what 1967 felt like all year. It was blustery and sparse and bad but not the end of the world because it wasn't the end of the season. You can handle this a little better in April, even on the final afternoon of April. This was one of those days when the Nikon Camera Player of the Game was either the school group that kept up a LET'S GO METS! chant as the innings grew late and the sun grew elusive or the school group that filed out after the eighth but not before shouting toward the field, BYE METS!

I hope we're not all saying that soon where the 2008 season is concerned.

Some nights we invoke Bob Murphy and offer a happy recap. Some nights we channel Gary Cohen when the big hit is outta here! Some nights we are thrilled to make like Howie Rose and put it in the books! Some nights we even have to agree with Fran Healy that Shea Stadium is rocking!

Tuesday night brought to mind the unlamented Steve Albert because the Mets won a game he might have called scintillating — except unlike Steve, we make no pretenses about our sarcasm.

That was not one of your more scintillating walkoff wins. But the key, after eleven innings, is it was a win and 187,932 fans or whatever fictional figure they posted as the paid attendance left less unhappy than they might have had it not been. Surely it could have gotten surly late.

But don't call me surly. Even if Santana's gopher is still nibbling a little too heartily. Even if Sanchez and Wagner have forsaken perfection as their guiding principle. Even if Reyes' sextet of on-base appearances was overshadowed by his inability to keep one Pirate off base at the worst possible moment. Even if Heilman...ah, you know from Heilman. And even if Delgado was burdened by no vexing decisions regarding curtain call or not to curtain call. Don't call me surly, because a win is a win is not a loss.

Let us not accentuate the negative. Let us glory instead in Ryan Chruch's lefthanded jacking, which can be impressive. Let us note the six times Jose Jose'd his way on base. Let us remember why we fell in love with Endy Chavez those two years ago, first and foremost for the offensive spark we see again now that Endy is playing and regaining traction (at least until Moises Alou returns and inevitably winds up in traction). Let us not forget that the only homers Johan surrendered were soloists and that he was otherwise clean. Let us hand it to Scott Schoeneweis for covering home as he did and to Raul Casanova for shoveling Schoeney the 2-1 assist that cut down Jose Bautista at the plate in the seventh. Let pause and ponder what kind of manager sets the wheels in motion so someone named John Wesley Van Benschoten can pitch to someone named David Allen Wright with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eleventh with less than two out.

I'm not sure, upon reflection, how that could have been avoided once Endy was balked to second and bunted to third, but it sure seemed more fait accompli than it had to. You put on Reyes, you let him take second and you then pitch to Castillo who walks. Could have the Mets, even our hard-to-hug Mets, not cashed in? Against the Bucs? David comes up, the annually feisty if perennially futile Pirates go down. One pitch, one fly ball, one win that couldn't be avoided, done deal. For Pittsburgh, he says at the risk of offending the gods, I suppose simply asking somebody to retire Wright and Beltran was not an option.

The vengeful spirit of Hans Wagner notwithstanding, what really spooked me was the matchup that had Duaner Sanchez facing Xavier Nady in the eighth. July 31, 2006 and everything after flashed before my eyes. Sanchez gets into a cab; Nady gets onto a plane; Oliver Perez comes into and out of his own; Guillermo Mota and Shawn Green arrive with much baggage; '06 grows less certain; '06 just misses being a year for the ages; '06 becomes '07; '07 becomes '07; '07 becomes '08; '08 becomes the year we look for excuses to be relentlessly pissed off at our team...or the excuses seek us out on their own. Maybe all that arguably sprung from the events of that red-letter date in Mets history is why even walkoff wins around here can sometimes seem a little less than scintillating.

But we'll take them. And don't call me surly.

An out-of-town tryout used to be a staple of the theater. It was where producers ran their musicals up the flagpole to see what was saluted and what sagged in the breeze before fixing up the rough patches, packing up the trunks and transporting the whole shooting match to the Great White Way. Like those barnstorming tours that wound their way from Spring Training north to Opening Day, you don't get out-of-town tryouts much in the theater anymore.

The audiences for these Broadway-bound previews were generally in the Northeast, not far from New York, yet worlds away: Philly, Boston, Baltimo', as the itinerary went in Kiss Me Kate. New Haven, too. Washington? Not so much as far as I know. Yet last week, I felt I was privy to a dry run of sorts: Another ballpark op'nin', another show — one season before the spotlight will be beamed directly onto the Great Blue & Orange Way.

Of course I wanted to go to Nationals Park because it was there. Every Major League ballpark I've seen (and I've seen 32 now) is Everest to me. And of course I wanted to go because the Mets would be playing. But there was a little extra curiosity factored into my D.C. travel plans. The Nats would be playing their eighth home game ever in their new digs. Though I'd been to a few stadia in their first season, I'd never shown up this early in the life of a park. Thus, I wanted to get a sense, just under one year from the curtain rising on Citi Field, what an almost pristine ballpark feels like.

It feels pretty good, in its out-of-town way.

Ya gotta load up any assessment you make of a ballpark as a visiting fan with a suitcase of asterisks. It's different for you because you're there tonight and you're leaving tomorrow. Even if you plan on returning, it's not home, not yours. Even if the place has still got that new park smell, yours aren't the nostrils that are unclogged after breathing in the stale air of its predecessor. The diehard Washington Nationals fan, however rare and relatively novice, is the one who just escaped from RFK. It may take that creature months to detect any drawbacks in anything that isn't the Federal Baseball Penitentiary.

Nationals Park offers much nicer surroundings. The now-reabandoned RFKFBF was any port in a storm for the post-Expos. It was the Hooverville of the National League East. It was Olympic Stadium without the élan. Anything that succeeded RFK — with the possible exception of the Days Inn where I bunked for the night — would have been an improvement.

It was instructive to wander the concourses of Nationals Park, to gaze at the shiny seats and scoreboard, to try to figure out why they put stuff where they did and wonder what it will be like next year when it's us getting the lay of our own land.

With Citi Field far along, I don't know that the Mets are looking for cues from their divisional rival. They could do worse than to borrow generously from their DiamondVision or NationalVision or whatever it's called. It's huge and it's clear. They could also note what the Nats missed, like a permanent tracker of what the batter did in his last at-bat(s). With so much high-def hardware at work, there should be relevant data always at the ready, not just Marlon Anderson's height.

My friend Jeff and I sat in some very fine what we'll call field level seats in short left last Wednesday night, pretty comparable to where I was eight nights earlier at Shea. There is definitely something to be said for seats that are tilted toward home plate. There is also something to be said for sloping the steps in such a way that once somebody stands up in your midst (to buy a hot dog, to sell a beer, to mindlessly stare), you the seated are not blocked from the action. Mild-mannered Jeff rightly morphed into a bear as backs and shoulders and heads kept us from seeing a damn thing. Given the genuine obstacle to line of sight this non-action represented, I'm guessing getting up constantly is a cherished local tradition.

New rule: If you have a rookie pitcher setting the world on figurative fire, stand and clap. If it's the third inning and nothing's going on but a 2-1 count, sit the fudge down. Perhaps the "tennis seating" decorum I've seen employed in other places (even Philadelphia), where you are momentarily kept from returning to your seat while baseball is in progress, should be de rigueur. Given the price of a ticket, you should be entitled to see as much of it as you (or Jeff) paid for.

Not that Nationals fans, even the one who lobbed a snide junkball about the high Met payroll (which explained why we won, according to him), struck me as rude. I'm not sure I saw a whole lot of Nationals fans, at least relative to the ton of outlanders who descended on Washington last week. If there is one tradition that trailed the Expos to their final resting spot, it was that we, as in the Metropolitan we, were everywhere. No tension because of the crowd composition, at least not from where I sat and craned. No booing of Mets by Mets fans for a change (we're all in this together when we congregate elsewhere). No escalating drunken bravado on a Wednesday night à la what reports suggest has become the norm in certain slices of Citizens Bank. The Nats didn't come close to selling out their eighth game ever in their new park and that was with a generous helping of us on board. As some have been known to suggest in the seat of government regarding other invasions, they should be greeting Mets fans with flowers and chocolates.

If they did, however, would they know where to find them? While Nationals Park did give lie to half of the old bromide that Washington is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm (I liked the line of golf-shirted greeters who profusely thanked us for coming), it doesn't appear that all the kinks have been ironed out. Concessions still seemed a bit overwhelmed, even without an SRO audience. The dreaded taking of the bottlecap, which I thought was a Shea-only pre-emptive punishment, was exercised at one stand, but not at another. Uncertainty of how to work all the levers extended to more visible facets of the operation as well.

When Duaner Sanchez entered the game, the massive scoreboard identified him as UNKNOWN. Innings earlier, Angel Pagan, No. 16 on the Mets, was billed as Jay Payton, No. 16 on the Orioles — there was even a picture of our 2000 centerfielder in his Bird garb to complete the illusion that the Mets might win a pennant this year. (Payton was in the system, Jeff inferred, because the Nats played the O's in an exhibition game, one of those dress rehearsals intended to, yup, iron the kinks out before the ballgames count.)

Anybody could make if not those mistakes then something like them. Shea was several decades old when its board ops declared Jason Phillips' first Major League hit belonged to Vance Wilson. It was even older when it randomly assigned Pedro Martinez's 3,000th strikeout a year ahead of time and to nobody in particular. At Shea, it's quirky. At a brand new facility, it's time for another run-through. For Citi Field, it's a cautionary tale to really think through everything (like where to not mount a mile-high home plate camera), really test everything and really teach everybody how to use everything.

It's perverse fun to nitpick — even Natpick — but there was a lot to like about the new place. It's easy as hell to get to by Metro, which, in turn, is always easy as hell to navigate. Nationals Park is one block from the Navy Yard station which is already more efficiently coordinated after a game than the 44-year-old Willets Point-Shea Stadium stop. There are nice if not expansive nods to Washington baseball history around the main concourse and, let's face it, there's not all that much Washington baseball history to show off. The Nats even tip their caps to greats of the game from other cities (perhaps they understand much of their trade will come from elsewhere). Though you have to be pretty high up to notice the Capitol dome and such, the cherry blossoms planted above the outfield are a phenomenal District touch. Balls don't seem to fly out of this joint any more than they did RFK, so the saplings are probably safe from falling objects.

The Nats skipped the bricks and the overwrought homages to a mythic baseball past. The clean, well-lighted, modern approach was refreshing even if red brick can serve as an effective Pavlovian cue to get fields-of-dreamy about one's surroundings. You don't always, however, need to be enveloped by a manufactured past. That said, there was something about Nationals Park that made it feel — and this isn't intended to come out as derisive as it will — like a very nice and very large Grapefruit League park. It wasn't sterile as much as not yet defined, not yet lived in. Maybe after eight games, it's not supposed to be.

Nationals Park may not be the coziest bed & breakfast of ballparks, but it's at least a reasonably functional Marriott. It's very much worth a visit (though you should probably ante up for a reasonably functional Marriott if you're staying over and eschew the Days Inn of Silver Spring, Md.; trust me on this one). The Mets will be back in August if it's the Mets you want to see. I'd suggest seeing it before they sell the naming rights because, honestly, the best part of this particular ballpark relative to those I've visited in the past half-decade or so was the lack of a suffocating corporate presence. No kidding. I realized as I loped about before the game how nice it was to not be reminded every six feet that some great financial institution or fine American brewer was bringing me this baseball game.

That may sound like projected carping over World Class Citi Field, and maybe it is a little, but the way I noticed there was no corporation sponsoring everything is the way I used to notice when there was one. Know what I mean? It used to be strange to see a company name plastered all over the place. Now we accept it as a part of doing business like we accept so much of everything in this world. For a night, corporate naming rights weren't a fact of ballpark life and it was a surprisingly welcome sight to not see.

As for trying to discern, pesky aesthetics aside, what our nights and days will be like as we edge closer to our new stage, you cross your fingers and you hold your heart that it will be worth the hype and worth the wait and worth the sacrifice of what many of us adore and are instinctively reluctant to let go. What will it be like when the new ballpark isn't someone else's, but ours? Duaner Sanchez's mysterious D.C. identity notwithstanding, that is the great unknown.

12: Tuesday, September 9 vs Nationals
Often this year, ladies and gentlemen, as we have tackled our Countdown Like It Oughta Be, we have spoken to the extraordinary versatility of Shea Stadium and the kinds of events it has hosted. This grass and these walls have provided temporary grounds to icons spiritual, presidential and rock 'n' roll and to outdoor sports of all stripe.

But when you get right down to it, when you think of Shea and you think of something besides the Mets, you think of one other name. You think of the Jets.

Tonight we honor Shea Stadium's other long-time team-in-residence, the gang that called Flushing Meadows home for two solid decades. During their tenure here from 1964 through 1983, they made history, they wrought cheers and they made some very cold Sundays feel a little warmer.

Join us now in saluting an organization that started in the Polo Grounds, cultivated a new breed of fan and conjured a miracle of its own.

Join us now in welcoming home your New York Jets.

Football requires eleven men on the field at all times, thus we have gathered together eleven New York Jets greats who represent the team's most spectacular Shea Stadium achievements.

You can't have football without a kickoff, and no kicker was more identified with the tricky winds of Flushing Bay than he who battled them, ultimately successfully, for ten seasons before finding friendlier climes slightly to the west — Pat Leahy.

Playing special teams, one of the dangerous return men of his time, he led the entire National Football League in all-purpose yardage and three times in kick yardage; give it up for Bruce Harper.

On defense, four men who formed an unforgettable unit and heated up the Jets in their rise back to playoff contention in the early 1980s. Quarterbacks could never sit on their portfolios when the New York Sack Exchange was open for business. Give one more Shea Stadium welcome to these unstoppable defensive linemen: Abdul Salaam, Marty Lyons, Mark Gastineau and Joe Klecko.

From the offensive line, a player who spanned the two periods of Shea Stadium Jets glory, a member of the 1981 Jets team that played the final postseason football game ever at Shea Stadium and a rock for the '68 Super Bowl champs and '69 AFL Eastern Division winners as well, say hi to a guard for all seasons, Randy Rasmussen.

Staying on offense, we have three of the great weapons of the Super Bowl III champions, a trio of the most shimmering stars of the American Football League.

• He led the AFL in touchdowns scored in 1967, the year the Jets rose to respectability, and earned all-pro honors in 1968, Emerson Boozer.

• In the AFL championship game right here on December 29, 1968, he rushed 19 times for 71 yards and scored the first points of the Super Bowl two weeks later in Miami, Matt Snell.

• His six catches for 118 yards amid the bitter chill of Shea, including two for TDs, ensured the Jets would prevail over Oakland for the right to take on the Baltimore Colts and eventually secure supremacy of the football world. He is a pro football hall of famer and surely a Titan among Jets. At wide receiver, Don Maynard.

Finally, to lead his teammates down the Shea Stadium field one more time, there is no Jet more appropriate than he who will remove, yes, number 12, from the right field wall. Little more needs to be said than...ladies and gentlemen, from Broadway all the way back to Roosevelt Avenue, the greatest New York Jet of them all, Joe Namath.

Number 13 was revealed here.

One of the definitive events in recent Met years happened on April 6, 2006 -- Carlos Beltran, after being treated shabbily by the Shea faithful for much of 2005 and booed during a slump in the early part of his next season, hit a home run, circled the bases and then plunked his behind on the bench, obviously angered by the fans' sudden about-face and demands for a curtain call. As the cheers continued, Julio Franco came over and spoke quietly but pointedly to him, after which Carlos popped out of the dugout for a wave. It was quick and it was grudgingly done, but it was the end of booing Beltran -- he and we were off on a magical season.

Fast-forward to yesterday, with Carlos Delgado mired in what's either a horrible slump or the middle stages of the end. After his second home run of the day -- an old-fashioned Delgado no-doubter off the scoreboard -- the fans who have booed him mightily at Shea of late wanted their curtain call. But Delgado wasn't coming out -- and there was no Julio Franco to suggest he rethink that decision.

The tabloid and radio debate over whether that was a bad move will go on for a bit, with what Delgado does tonight against Pittsburgh having potentially serious bearing. Delgado said yesterday that that kind of thing isn't his style, citing respect for the game -- and the Associated Press backed him up with the tidbit that he's only taken curtain calls for a four-homer performance and his 400th round-tripper.

Logical enough, but awfully facile as explanations go. Delgado's a smart guy. He knows fans, and he knows New York. He knows perfectly well that what he was given yesterday was a peace offering, and he declined it. Which is his right, of course -- he's been treated poorly by a fan base for whom "the natives are restless" would be a perilous understatement these days, and I don't blame him for refusing to bask in the warmth of their fair-weather affection. On the other hand, that rejection is an invitation for even-heartier abuse -- and the comment about respect for the game, with the insinuation that the fans lack it, won't be missed by the boobirds.

I've found myself shifting a little where Delgado's concerned. While I haven't booed him, I haven't exactly been in his corner. By even the kindest measure his play has been atrocious this year both at bat and in the field. But what continues to burn me is the ever-flammable subject of 2007. For all Delgado was hailed as a clubhouse leader when he arrived, I remember him being in evidence off the field twice last year -- once during the farcical week when Paul Lo Duca was supposedly a racist, and again when he was telling the New York Observer that the Mets got kind of bored out there. Neither particularly endeared him to me. (Though on Saturday CW11's cameras caught him consoling Aaron Heilman in the dugout after Heilman absorbed his own latest blistering of the fans -- a welcome sight, but the kind of thing I thought we'd get from him routinely.)

But this column by the peerless Tim Marchman moved me to a bit of pity -- Marchman offers a cold-eyed dissection of Delgado's woes, with little hope for a turnaround, but tempers that grim analysis with the observation that "one just hopes that the fans and even the writers keep in mind that baseball is hard. Don't get down on the man: Even if it isn't enough, he's doing what he can." And there's no reason to doubt that. Delgado appears to have gotten old a couple of years earlier than we'd thought he would, but that's not a hanging crime. Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez and Edgardo Alfonzo, to name just three, all had the same thing happen to them. I'd like to think I never would have booed them, no matter what the circumstances.

Saturday, too, was a bit of an eye-opener where Delgado was concerned. Sitting in the bleachers with Greg and Emily and Joshua was fun for a lot of reasons, but it was an eye-opener about some baseball basics that I'd never appreciated because of years of seeing balls in play primarily from the camera behind home plate.

1. Losing a ball against the sky is easier than you'd think. Endy and Church both struggled with fly balls Saturday afternoon, and from the bleachers it was easy to see why. The best possible description of the sky was "baseball-colored" -- once balls cleared the top of the stadium, it was touch and go just where they'd gone.

2. He really isn't going to throw that runner out. Runner on second, single to center, runner is heading home, the center fielder has the ball -- and then you mutter when the center fielder just lobs it in. There wasn't a possible play on him? Really? Really. The view from the home-plate camera is foreshortened. When Francoeur rushed home in the sixth on Prado's single and Beltran flipped the ball in, I knew by the timing of events that it was exactly the kind of play that would have had me wondering if the run was assured of scoring. Watching it from behind Beltran's position, it was obvious he had no chance at a play. That camera lies about just how far it is to home plate.

3. Most fly balls have no chance. I'm rarely fooled into thinking flyouts are home runs or doubles anymore (heck, just look at the outfielders if you can't figure it out off the bat), but there's no doubt at all from behind the outfielders. The sound, velocity and trajectory of a well-struck ball are instantly and obviously different from a long but routine fly.

Delgado's drive in the fifth -- the one Mark Kotsay caught on the warning track and thought was the third out -- was different. It was hammered, and knocked down just enough by the wind to stay in the yard. And then he got booed for it, by a crowd that included lots of people yelling excitedly for balls the second baseman reeled in 30 feet into the outfield. I wouldn't feel charitable after too many days of that either.

But finally, there's this difference between the two Carloses and their curtain calls. Beltran was beginning the second year of a long stay in New York, one that had begun on a difficult note. Handed an olive branch, he had to take it -- or run the very real risk of having to hear about that refusal from the fans and the beat writers forevermore. This is Delgado's last Flushing rodeo -- barring a Lazarus-like turnaround, he's getting bought out before Citi Field opens and either moving to the American League or hanging them up for good. Beltran had to come out, for any number of reasons enumerated hastily by Julio Franco. Delgado did not, and didn't.

I got to spend an extra half-hour with my wife. I got a foam finger. I got to meet a mezzanine icon. I got a kid an ice cream cone. I got my 89th starting pitcher. I got three substantial home runs. I got a fearless catch from a fearless rightfielder. I got my third win covering two ballparks in a span of four days. I got my fourth consecutive triumph over our most bitter rivals. I got the 4:24 at Woodside. I got home earlier and with less angst than yesterday.

I didn't get Carlos Delgado returning my appreciation for him. I don't get that it's a big deal.

I've been baseballing like crazy since the gun sounded on the home season. I tied an April record for most Shea games attended and, precipitation pending, I'm not through yet. Throw in the trip to Washington (reflections on Nationals Park still to come) and I've been incredibly indulged, mostly by myself, occasionally by others — such as my Sunday hosts, the legendary Chapmans. Go to a game with Sharon, Kevin and Ross and it is Chapmania all around in the best sense of the made-up word.

So we had fun and I had foam. I nearly didn't have the latter. I was enjoying a bagel and such with Stephanie this morning and opted for a later train than planned, knowing full well that only the first 25,000 would get fitted for their complimentary puffy palms, one of those items I don't really need but didn't realize how much I wanted until I saw I'd missed out on them at Gate E. It didn't annoy me until I saw the Gate B crowds were still getting theirs even though their tickets were scanned minutes after mine. Grrr...

I put aside my huffery over my lack of puffery and joined the gang for a game whose result never felt much in doubt, even if it was against the sworn enemies of Shea satisfaction, the Atlanta Braves. I chilled out soon after arriving with two helpings of lineless Carvel, one for me, one for Ross, payment for an autumn wager when his mom's school beat mine in some sport I can barely remember caring about. My spoon wasn't to the bottom of the helmet when the bat of Raul Casanova nearly produced sprinkles. In the spirit of asking what have Brian Schneider and Ramon Castro done for me lately? I sure do like our new catching platoon.

John Smoltz was as untroubling as Tim Hudson, which is to say neither man could hold a candle to the guy with all the J's in his name from Friday. Nelson Figueroa, meanwhile, continued to warm the cockles of his relatives and the rest of us. Happy to add him to The Log, happy to raise my lifetime regular-season home win total to within two of 200, happy and amazed to note I haven't seen a loss to the Braves since 2006...and I see the Braves a lot.

It won't show up in the boxscore, but I drew face time with the one and only Kowalski (or KOWALSKI 69, if you've only seen/heard him from a distance). It was a chance meeting in the mezz concourse somewhere off his Section 18 hyping spot, but it was a marvelous interaction. Beer and kind words were graciously offered. He shouts, we blog...it's all good. (Also gratified to meet commenter Dykstraw on the 7 yesterday; hope the Donovan's burger was a hit.)

The only item absent from a potentially extraordinarily happy recap as the game wound down was my damn foam finger. It says #1 FAN on it, and I refuse to acknowledge 25,000 people in my midst today ranked ahead of me. I'll step aside for Ross and maybe Kowalski, but the other 24,998 of you are on notice.

Not to worry, though, because I was experiencing Chapmania, and the Chapmans have a way of making things happen. Kevin, who coaches baserunners from his seat better than Matt Galante ever did from the third base box, scooped up someone else's leave-behind before I even had a chance to scavenge. I was foamy, I was whole. Spurred by my completion, I somehow found the right ramp, crossed the right street, got on the right superexpress and was whisked eastbound on the LIRR before I realized I wasn't going to have stare at my watch and tap my foot (as I did yesterday when Woodside trackwork got my goat).

Sounds like a great day, huh? So why is it I'm hearing and reading that the big thing that happened this cloudy but beautiful Sunday was that Carlos Delgado, he who smashed two very round-trippers, didn't take a curtain call? We mezzanineans who were supportive with our applause even before his first swing didn't seem to mind we didn't get a bow, a tip or a wave. Would have been nice if we had, wasn't so bad that we didn't. We understood why he might have been reticent after the April he's endured, a month when his slumping ways were little tolerated by a vocal minority. By the time it was obvious Delgado wasn't curtain-calling us back, we had moved on to encouraging Casanova some more, just as we had relentlessly acknowledged Ryan Church for his spectacular catch and body bounce at the wall moments earlier. We were too overjoyed by the final result in progress to get hung up on a pointed lack of communication from our maybe moody (and highly compensated) first baseman.

I had a fine seat, good company and a great win. I was even given the finger in the best possible manner. Delgado didn't act extraordinarily grateful for being heartily feted one day after he was ridiculously booed for booming a ball that was caught at the track? When you read later or tomorrow that "the fans" were disappointed or spurned by Carlos Delgado, understand that at least one of us — and probably a lot of us — were perfectly pleased by their Sunday in the park with Mets.

How is it remotely possible that Shea and I got to its last year together without me and its bleachers making mutual acquaintance? It's no longer a relevant question because (cue the Colbertian fanfare), I DID IT!

So much excitement for sitting as far from home plate (non-vertically) as you possibly can, but it's been my mildly holy grail since 1979 when the bleachers first went up in left field. I've been almost haunted by them. That fall, eleventh grade, Joel and I took a bogus class called Business Law whose textbook offered a hypothetical verbal contract between two people regarding the resale of two tickets to "the bleachers at Shea Stadium," which was strange because there had been no bleachers at Shea Stadium when the book was published. We informed our teacher of how bizarre we found this example. He didn't care. And neither did the Mets. The Mets couldn't just sell bleachers tickets like every other team that had a bunch of benches. They made it a thing...a generally unavailable thing.

I'll get there eventually, I thought. Sure, they say they're only for groups of 50 or more, but those bleachers have to open their golden chain link fence to the likes of me. I'll get with a group. I'll make 49 friends. I'll find a use for these seat cushions they keep giving me that would just be perfect under my rear end out there. I just know I'll reach those bleachers.

But I never did. Never did the Pepsi can-or-bottle thing after it became the Pepsi Picnic Area; just didn't have the Wednesday afternoons free to stand in line. Once in a while, usually when it was freezing and the Mets were putrid, mets.com would invite me to rush over if I printed something out. That didn't work for me either. But my chance will come. I know it will. I would go on to sit in Diamond View Suites and Metropolitan Clubs and right behind home plate and adjacent to a dugout and in front of Tommie Agee's marker and within peeling distance of the Apple and all the way up in Row V where the world doesn't get any higher. I'd sat everywhere except the one place I really wanted a crack at.

The seasons passed. The opportunities did not present themselves. Until today.

I wasn't attached to a group per se, except for the traditional all-star cast of Faith and Fear's extended family (Jason, Emily, Joshua). Our in was a fundraiser for the Epilepsy Foundation of Long Island, part of the Jack Lang Day festivities. For the first time I could remember, crashing the gates of the bleachers was as simple as buying a ticket, one that included a charitable component and a little buffet action.

Hell yes! Bleachers here I came!

I'm happy to report they didn't disappoint. They were as exotic as they were accessible. It was like being at Shea and having Shea in front of you and being in another Shea all at the same time.

Why did they hide this from me for nearly 29 years? I loved it for some reason. For many reasons, actually.

• There was the legendary picnic tent, at least from the time somebody handed me a bureaucratically tangled wristband until the setup was arbitrarily put away in the middle innings. It wasn't extravagant, but it was the picnic tent. All that was missing was Mike Piazza taking Ramiro Mendoza to its roof.

• There was the Keyspan sign not as an unimaginable target but as a tall neighbor.

• There were the championship flags over my left shoulder.

• There was a bathroom with no lines.

• There was Mr. Met, a pro's pro who gave Joshua a big league hug and his mom ample opportunity to fish out her camera. Honest to god, the difference between Mr. Met and Sandy the Seagull is the difference between the majors and single-A.

• There was a brief glimpse inside the Braves bullpen, a long enough look to cast an effective evil eye on the otherwise impenetrable Tim Hudson.

What I missed in sightlines to the infield was more than made up by understanding a little better what fly balls look like to the outfielders. We couldn't see DiamondVision but we heard it just fine. And when the organized fun of the eighth-inning singalong broke out ("I'm A Believer," an honorable selection if you have to have one at all), it was kind of kicky when the ooohs boomeranged back at us from the regular seats.

The regular seats...how the other 99/100ths lived. Poor saps. They didn't get to stretch out in the sun. They didn't get to stamp their feet and make aluminum noise. They didn't get to wander around and around a four-row fiefdom like Joshua did. They didn't get not just their choice of ziti or pasta salad but BOTH! It may come as a shock to my system Sunday afternoon to learn the mezzanine doesn't offer the same all-you-can eat ethos.

It helps to be 1-0 in games at which I've sat in the bleachers. After Friday night's "don't just do something, stand there" approach to offense, I was wary that Saturday would wind up a wasted day in the Pepsi Panic Area. But, no, Gustavo Molina and the Mets used their allotted one inning of scoring to collect enough runs to withstand the slings and arrows of Braves dreaded and unfamiliar. John Maine gritted his teeth through five and it took a bullpen of millions to hold them back, but a win is a win — and though there were no shots over its fence, sitting at last in Shea's bleachers turned out to be a personal home run.

"In the realm of sports, yeah, no question, it was a devastating loss. It was a devastating loss for us as a team, certainly for me as a player, and for the fans, no question about it. As a fan of sports and sports teams, I understand that feeling. But I guess I was approaching it more from a life standpoint and not so much from a sports standpoint. ... Was that the right time for me to try to make that distinction? Probably not."

Finally. Now go away anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen, here they are, your 2007 New York Mets!

Wait, what's that? You're sure? But I see...

...a pathetic lack of offense
...indifferent defense
...inefficient starting pitching
...scattershot relief
...mental mistakes
...can-do blather from authority figures
...no indication that anybody wearing the uniform is ready to stand up and say enough's enough.

I thought that extra-inning win against the Phillies had finally lanced this infection (don't listen, Schneider), with the first two games at the Ex-Vet letting the poison drain out. But I was wrong. By too many indications this is the same badly constructed, poorly led, sadly complacent team I came to thoroughly dislike last year. Last summer I found out something I pretty much knew anyway, and would happily have gone to my grave never having confirmed: It's no fun disliking your favorite team. It turns one of the nicest things in life into a trial, and the best part of the year into a sweaty version of winter. I'd really, really like never to feel that way again, or at least not to know that dreadful feeling more than once a generation or so. But these days and nights feel horribly familiar.

I know I don't want to feel that way again. I take it on faith that most of the guys in the clubhouse and running the team don't want to feel that way again. But I can't do anything about it except type while steam whistles out of my ears. Since that's not true of them, I have only one question: Which one of you is going to put your foot down and inform all concerned that it's not acceptable for this year to be like last year?

Welcome to Flashback Friday: Tales From The Log, a final-season tribute to Shea Stadium as viewed primarily through the prism of what I have seen there for myself, namely 361 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.

8/11/84 Sa Pittsburgh 1-5 Gooden 1 11-22 W 3-1
Dwight Gooden's eleventh Shea Stadium start was the first of his I ever saw in person. No disrespect to the other 87 Mets I've seen start at home, but I never looked forward to seeing a pitcher the way I did Doc.

How could you not? He was the sensation of the National League in 1984 — he and the shockingly surging Mets. While I was at school in Tampa during the spring and early summer, I would read descriptions of the scene at Shea and dream about what it would be like to be there for something like this, as related by Jim Kaplan in Sports Illustrated that June.

Dwight Gooden, the Mets' 19-year-old rookie righthander, was scheduled to pitch against Montreal last Friday night, and the excitement mounted all day in New York. Offices buzzed with talk of his strikeouts. Radio stations led their sports reports with his name. People stampeded the Shea Stadium ticket windows, swelling the crowd to 39,586. Then, as Gooden built up two-strike leads against Montreal batters, the fans went bananas, clapping, screaming, whistling and waving "K" signs.

On that particular night, the Mets didn't win. They fell to the Expos 2-1, but it was almost beside the point. Gooden struck out eleven Expos, with the fans who had waited seemingly forever for someone like him growing more and more frenzied with every pitch. As Kaplan put it, "the decibel level [was] increasing with each K ... It was an occasion, an event, a spectacle ... He's a happening in New York, just as Mark Fidrych and Fernando Valenzuela were in their rookie years in Detroit and L.A."

Mark Fidrych never came to Shea, but I was there when Fernandomania touched down. That was indeed a happening, even if it was the guy in the wrong uniform causing it. Mike Scott pitched, to that stage of his career, the game of his life, but nobody cared. It was Fernando Valenzuela, the 1-0 winner on May 8, 1981, for whom nearly 40,000 crowded normally moribund Shea. Sombreros were worn. The Mets gave out tortilla chips. It was exciting, if bittersweet, given that it was the visiting starting pitcher at the center of the fuss.

Not the case in '84. It was all Doc and he was all ours. I would get my first look that counted (after seeing him in St. Pete that March) on a Saturday night against the Pirates in August. It was something to see, something to be a part of.

First up for Pittsburgh, former Met farmhand Marvel Wynne. Doc gets a strike on him. Then another. I'm up and applauding — CLAP CLAP CLAP. Just like I read about. Just like I saw on TV. Guy behind me taps me on the shoulder and asks me to sit down, it's only the first.

Sorry, I say. It's just that I've waited so long for this.

Wouldn't take very long to get what I came for. Wynne struck out. I was back on my feet again, applauding wildly and unrhythmically. Doc had one K in the books, one instantly affixed to the facade of the upper deck in left. It was a ritual that would be repeated nine more times. Doc would blaze a fastball by an overmatched Buc. Doc's curve would drop in for black & gold doom. The DiamondVision would display a shark swallowing a batter. The PA would blare the theme from Jaws. An alphabet of nothing but K's would be extended.

Everybody was beside himself with joy. Everybody was standing in front of the guy behind him.

Hubie Brooks doubled home two runs. George Foster drove one over the fence. Jesse Orosco registered a save. The Mets won 3-1, but it was almost beside the point. Doc was the point. Doc's 10 K's. Doc breaking Jerry Koosman's team rookie record for strikeouts. Doc being 19 and virtually untouchable.

What could be better than that?

***
It's easy enough to remember Dwight Gooden's role in the Dwight Gooden phenomenon. It was his, after all. But you can't overlook the fans in accounting for what a big, big deal he and his strikeouts were. You can't think of Dr. K without the literal hanging of K's in his honor. That was my thinking when, in imagining the Countdown Like It Oughta Be, we had the Mets pay homage to not just Gooden but to those who came up with the K Korner koncept.

I faced one problem, however, in writing up that entry. Who was responsible? I could remember the K's, I could remember the buzz around them, but I couldn't remember the names of those who gave life to them. It was a couple of guys, I thought. Or maybe more. Or maybe one. After running some searches, I came up 'Net-empty. The only clue I had came from Jack Lang's eternally Amazin' The New York Mets: Twenty-Five Years of Baseball Magic: a picture whose caption identified three fans hoisting K's. One was Dennis Scalzitti who was said to have "originated the idea" and the other two were "his cohorts" Bob Belle and Neil Kenny. With at least that much information on hand, I credited them, as a unit, for having "founded the K Korner" and gave them the virtual honor of removing, in conjunction with Gooden himself, number 31 from our fanciful right field wall.

Funny how the Web works. I couldn't find any concrete background on the K Korner before I mentioned it, but now I've been sent some by a person who read that entry. He's seems a reasonably reliable source:

For the record, The K Korner was created in 1984 by two 22-year old guys from northern New Jersey named Dennis Scalzitti and Leo Avolio, and was present in the left field upper deck (Section 42) at every game Dwight Gooden pitched at Shea Stadium.

Kenny, our source says, was a "rabid" enough Mets fan, but just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the photo that wound up in the book was snapped. In '84, it was Scalzitti and Avolio, from Doc's early starts (when only diehards were in attendance) to his explosion onto the national stage, who were tracking strikeouts. Soon, with ESPN taking note, the K Korner was as famous as the Doctor himself.

Scalzitti's distinctive handpainted red K's on white posterboard hanging from the left field upper deck railing became a familiar and recognizable icon that summer, and fans were quick to jump on the bandwagon and get caught up in all the excitement of "swaying for a K" after Dwight got two strikes on a hitter.

1984 ended with Doc winning Rookie of the Year honors, but only half of the K tandem willing to see their phenomenon through to '85.

Leo indicated he didn't want to make the commitment to make the trek to Shea Stadium from Jersey anymore. Dennis begged to differ, and believed their efforts would lead to bigger and better things down the road. Regardless, Leo dropped out. In 1985 Scalzitti recruited his high school buddy Bob Belle as a replacement, and that was the year Gooden electrified the baseball world with one of the single greatest seasons any pitcher has ever had.

Indeed, Doc went 24-4 with a mind-blowing 1.53 ERA and 268 more strikeouts to go with the 276 from the season before. Doctor K was clearly established in his practice and those who hung out his shingle were steadfast in their support.

Dennis and Bob were besieged with newspaper and television interviews, as well as four appearances on The Joe Franklin Show. Their names, along with the trademarked name of "The K Korner," were now a part of New York baseball history. Dennis and Bob marketed their K cards, t-shirts and bandanas via a mail-order company and received orders from all over the country as Mets fans everywhere got caught up in strikeout fever.

The next year was stupendous for the Mets if only pretty darn good for Dwight Gooden (17-6, 2.84 ERA, a mere 200 strikeouts). Yet it wasn't at all bad for the K Korner duo.

Dennis and Bob signed a shoe contract with Nike. To date they are the only two fans to sign a contract of this sort. Nike reached out to Scalzitti and Belle and provided them with 27 laminated blue & orange K's with a flaming baseball in the center. This logo would appear on a full line of "Dr. K" shoes and merchandise later in the year, and the executives at Nike felt they would achieve maximum exposure if the logo was promoted in The K Korner. At that time, Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News applauded this business deal and called Scalzitti an entrepreneur. The "K-men" were invited to some celebrity events that season, and were seen rubbing shoulders with everyone from Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner to Nelson Doubleday, Frank Cashen, Mayor Ed Koch and Carly Simon. Security guards were provided (at Scalzitti's request) to protect them from some of the more "enthusiastic" fans, and they posed for photos and autographed everything from baseballs and scorecards to a girl's chest.

With the 1986 World Series won, the K Korner crested. One K went to Kooperstown, driven there personally by Dennis. One more trip to Joe Franklin's show came, too, though it was a sad one. Dennis and Bob went on to announce they were giving up their perch. This was in the spring of '87. The innocence surrounding Dwight Gooden had been sapped. But the memories would remain and are as indelible as those K's.

Two games will forever stand out in my mind: Dwight had 16 K's against the Pirates in late September 1984 and another 16 against the Giants in 1985. The entire stadium was just going completely NUTS!!! It was beyond description.

Anybody who watched Doc pitch then would agree, but I put particular stock in these recollections of what was "truly a magical time" at Shea Stadium. Why, you may be wondering, should we take this source's word for it?

Because I lived it...I was there. My name is Dennis Scalzitti.

Yes, the Dennis Scalzitti, then the guy who started playing up the K's, today the North Jersey-based owner of Coconut Joe's Music-To-Go, a full-time DJ service. Apparently he still likes making people happy. His K partner Bob Belle, meanwhile, seems to have taken his inspiration from the likes of Gary Carter and has gone into a segment of the cleanup business. In writing to us here, Dennis had just one request:

Please make sure to let the fans know how much we appreciated their incredible enthusiasm and support from 1984 to 1986. Not even ONE time did we ever get harassed or given a hard time by the people sitting around us when we were standing up or running up and down the aisles whipping everyone into a frenzy. The fans were just so cool, and it's very important they know how we fed off their energy and truly enjoyed being there to provide some entertainment for them.

This Friday's Flashback turned out to be as much Dennis's as mine, but that's all right. I wouldn't remember Doc's eleventh Shea start so fondly if it weren't for what Dennis began doing at the outset of '84, for the passion he unleashed in the rest of us. That's why you can't tell the story of a stadium via only its ballplayers. That's why sometimes, at the risk of being rude, you just can't sit down, no matter what the guy behind you says.

Another tale of another fan of another team from another ballpark in another time, very much worth reading here.